We all know that every great team has an amazing leader. But the world’s most high-performing leaders understand that in order to bond with and motivate others, you must be able to show your team that you truly understand their position, fears, emotions, motivations, and drivers before they will give you the permission to help them move to a new way of thinking. It’s the key to admission into your team’s world. Without it, you’re sunk.
In other words, if you want to build a world class team and keep your teammates on board, focused and driven to succeed, you need to become the kind of leader people want to follow.
Empathy + Awareness – The Formula For Creating A High-Performing Team
How does it make you feel when you go in to work or go home at the end of the day, and there’s a person there who looks directly into your eyes and says, “How are you doing?”
You can tell that they genuinely care, and it makes such a difference.
Contrast that with coming through the door at work and hearing, “Okay, here’s what you’ve got to do today…. Here’s what’s going on…. I need this done by three o’clock….” There’s a disconnection there, and it makes people feel uncomfortable and invisible. Having empathy and awareness for one another is an essential element for creating teams that work.
When you, as a leader, summon your most human side and try to ease the burden of the people around you (and inspire your teammates to do the same), it not only bonds your team and gets you to the finish line faster but also helps you create a lasting memory with that person, who will then hopefully pay that empathy forward to someone else.
People will always remember how you treated them, especially in their lowest moments. Always. And the best teammates are forever aware of that.
Great Leaders Connect To The Person Before The Point
Any salesperson or manager worth their salt can rattle off a list of their product’s or service’s features and benefits. But the most consistently high-achieving performers understand, developing a platform of trust, human connection and openness with a client is the key to any effective and productive communication.
By that, I mean the kind of communication or meeting where you don’t just walk away saying, “Well, I gave a great presentation. I hope they go with us.”
I’m talking about the kind of communication or meeting that you walk away from with a real understanding of why they like your product or service, why they have used your competitor’s products for so long, or what it’s really going to take to get their business. How great would that kind of trust and connection with a client be? And how useful is that kind of information? In essence, you walk away with the blueprint for your future success.
The most successful leaders in the world know that effective leadership is based on that same principle. They understand that you must connect to the person before the point.
In order to build the trust that will open your team member’s minds and hearts to you, there must come a moment in which they know that you care about them as a person and not just as an employee or prospective sale. If people like you and trust you, they will want to give their absolute best, and they will tell you exactly what you can do to help them get there.
Conversely, if you haven’t created that necessary bond up front, whether it’s something as small as mentioning that you like a prospect’s watch, commenting on their office photos from their safari, or noticing an award they have won and congratulating them on it, your product or service—no matter how great it is—will never win. At least not in the long run.
This isn’t rocket science; it’s humanness.
Understand That Leadership Is Not A Privilege, It’s A Responsibility
Sometimes it seems that the people who promote to leadership positions see it as a privilege (“yay! Now I only have to give commands in the fire station and talk on the radio at incidents”) versus a very big responsibility.
Attaining a leadership position should not mean that you are now free to do less of the hard work – it means that you’ve now taken on even more responsibility for the crew and their success.
During the 23 years that I spent as a full time firefighter for the City of San Diego, there was nothing that drove our crew more bananas than seeing our Captain, clean and dry, on the sidelines, chit chatting with the Chief, while we were sifting through wet, sooty, post-fire wreckage or carrying an extra large sick or injured person to a gurney, etc.
The Captains that hide behind their badge and their “privilege” when the going gets tough will never truly be well respected leaders.
The most effective leaders are at their best when they see their role as being an even bigger responsibility, in terms of the success of each team member, their customers, and their organization, versus the privilege of being “in charge”.
If you want to become a strong leader that people want to follow, you need to embrace the humility mindset and leave your privilege behind, consistently check with the crew to see if we have all of the resources they need, and even roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty with your teammates when they need you the most.
That’s how you gain respect and loyalty from the team and become the kind of leader that everybody wants to work with and work for.
Have Double Vision
We spend most of our days in the land of “the way I see it.” How can we not? We live behind our own two eyeballs and with our own experiences and backgrounds as our guides.
But true leaders know that by choosing to develop double vision, where they can see the world through their team members’ perspectives as well as their own, they inspire their teammates and create an unbreakable bond with them. A great leader is constantly walking a mile in their teammates’ shoes, trying to see, feel and experience their perspectives as a means to a deeper connection, and, most important, trust. When you trust, you allow yourself to be motivated and inspired by that person.
When the team doesn’t feel that their leader is making an effort to have that double vision—and it seems as if they only care about others to the extent that they need them to get across that finish line to achieve their personal goals, your synergy is doomed.
In business and life, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to prove to the big shots how great we are as solo players, but I think it’s much more important to prove who you are to your team. Instead of trying to impress your team members, focus instead on inspiring them. Trust me, if you do that, you’ll achieve both of those goals at the same time.
Be a leader you would follow. Be the person with double vision. Be the person who comes back and extends a hand. Be the person everyone knows they can count on. That’s the kind of person I want to work with, do business with and live with. That’s the kind of person I’ll choose for my team every time. And so will your teammates!
